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Tutti Frutti Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream with crystallized fruit, lemon, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk almost to boiling.

  2. Pour the hot milk gradually over the beaten egg yolks and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and boil for 10 minutes until it thickens into a custard.

  4. Let the custard cool, then beat in the cream.

Freeze

  1. Half-freeze the mixture before stirring in the chopped crystallized fruits, lemon juice, and sherry.

  2. Cover and freeze until firm.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during cooking and add richness.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture in the frozen ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and keeps the frozen ice cream softer rather than rock-hard.
Crystallized fruits
Supply the chunky fruit pieces and sweetness throughout the ice cream.

The step that matters

Boiling the custard for 10 minutes. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat; if the custard is under-cooked it stays thin, and if overheated it can curdle or scramble. Watch for it coating a spoon as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, egg, sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, sugar, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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